


something so magic

by orphan_account



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Pet Store, Animal Death, Animals, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Mutual Pining, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Drugs, Slow Burn, Tags Are Hard, Tags Contain Spoilers, Temporary Amnesia, bird shit, like goddamn i have a problem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 02:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20302006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: So Brian's working minimum wage in New York City while trying to write a musical. That's fine. And it's especially fine when his only customer is a very handsome goth jock-wannabe with an affinity for cats and an ever-present awkward smile on his face.





	something so magic

**Author's Note:**

> Hewwo
> 
> This fic will not be updated regularly, but it'll probably only be around three parts. Pay attention to the tags, please. 
> 
> Also...sorry if the characterizations are a bit off. This was really just a "I Want to Write About Magic" fic so I stuck these two losers in and went nuts.

So the pet shop is home to literally five cats, three dogs, approximately seventeen-and-a-half cockroaches, thirty-eight very angry tarantulas, a parakeet, and one very bored Brian.

It’s not a big shop. It’s probably not even legal, not that Brian’s going to question it. It’s a weird setup: down three sets of stairs, probably under a drug den or twelve, judging by his boss, hidden and tucked away in an alley two blocks away from the nearest big road. But, hey, twelve bucks an hour and plenty of time to be alone and to work on an album that is totally going somewhere is worth the smell and the piss that sometimes comes down from the ceiling. He’s only had five customers in the couple months he’s been working there, and four of them just robbed him, pet the dogs, and left. 

And so it absolutely is not his fault that he tips over and falls out of his chair when the door’s bell rings. It isn’t, and whoever just walked in is probably reconsidering and on their way back out the door. 

“Uh,” they say, squashing all of Brian’s hopes and dreams in a single phrase. “Excuse me?”

To his credit, Brian recovers quickly and only freaks a bit as he bounces to his feet and dusts himself off. The parakeet, who was asleep on top of his head before the fall, flitters up onto the counter and perches on the phone with a creak. And then he loses every bit of credit he could’ve ever had as he looks up and sees who might be the most beautiful man who has ever existed on the face of this planet, complete with dripping-wet hair and soaked flannel, both clinging to him tightly. 

“Rain,” smartly says Brian, and he then dies a bit more inside and sits his chair back upright.

“Yeah,” the man says, his mouth quirking a bit. “This is…” he coughs, and Brian nods. 

“Pussies and Bitches, yes.”

“Pussies and Bitches,” the man nods, and he smiles, and the lights begin to flicker, and Brian’s pretty sure it’s, like, a sign from God or something. The man bends down to stroke the parakeet’s head. “Cool.”

Brian snorts. “Right.”

“No, I mean it. Great name. Nice bird.”

Brian’s boss always taught him, on his sparse visits, that if someone wants an animal, that they’ll get the damn animal. They’ll get it, but for five-hundred percent more than however much he got it for, which was probably for free because Brian’s pretty sure these animals were stolen off of people’s back porches sometime in the Depression. 

He does the math quickly. 

“Josephine’s forty ninety-five,” Brian says, absolutely unsure if he did the math right at all. So he tags on a, “Plus shipping.”

The man shakes his head, and the parakeet gives the two of them a look out of her two lazy eyes. She wobbles a bit, and Brian picks her back up and deposits her back on his head, where she promptly tips over and chirps. 

“What?” Brian asks, gently stroking Josephine’s side. She’s heartbroken. 

“I have a cat,” the man says, and Brian is pretty sure that this guy doesn’t get what a pet shop’s for. Apparently, Brian’s traitor face betrays his true rage because the man holds up his hands defensively. “I’m…can I go back and see the cats? Please?”

Brian blinks. “The cats? Sir, the only cats we’ve got here are half-dead and all-asshole. You sure you don’t want Josephine here?” 

He gives an awkward smile, nudging Josephine with one finger. She, as expected, chitters and bites said finger gently.

The man glances back at the front door, and then he jumps back as a fresh splash of piss crashes down from above, just barely avoiding it. “Can I just see the cats?”

Now, Brian technically isn’t supposed to let just anyone see the animals. Josephine is the exception just because she won’t leave him alone. Sonny has a strict policy: don’t sell animals to anyone not willing to pay for the parakeet. It’s a strange policy, but it’s not like it ever matters. Until it does. Until God’s perfect man walks into the shop. 

So he nods and grins as brightly as he can, not even flinching at the sudden gunshots from upstairs. Josephine squawks and shits just a bit. And the man just stands there. 

* * *

So Patrick comes by every day at three p.m. sharp, goes into the cat room, and sits there with them for exactly forty-five minutes before handing Brian a very generous fifty dollar tip, shaking his hand, and leaving just as quickly as he appeared. Meaning he’s gone the minute Brian looks up from locking the cat room’s door behind them. Because Patrick (or Pat, as he keeps clarifying, claiming something about Patrick being his dad’s name) has only used the door once, or maybe he just stole the electronic bell off it so he can be a sneaky, scary bitch and scare Brian half to death every time he pops up. And he always smiles, and Brian always forgets how to speak for a good five minutes while Pat makes small talk with the cats like he can understand their pitiful little chirps and mews, and he doesn’t even mind the smoke pouring through the cracks in the ceiling or the muffled screams from the building above them. 

* * *

Two months after Pat’s first visit, Brian’s boss comes by for the first time since he was hired, a trail of the tangy scents of blood, viscera, and stale Purina in his wake. Susan, on the floor by the broken-down vending machine, perks up and starts swishing her tail back in forth, watching Sonny carefully. 

“Got a guy coming by later,” Sonny says, spitting on the floor. Josephine screams at him and burrows her way down into Brian’s hair. 

“Cool,” Brian says, absently flipping through the newspaper. “When?”

“Later,” Sonny snaps, in both the literal and figurative sense. “Got it?”

“Yessir,” Brian says. He glances up at his boss. “You okay?”

Sonny has been pacing in place for the past while, not stopping, continually running a hand through his hair. But he pauses and leers down at Brian. “Yeah. I’m fine. Why? She come by?”

“Who-”

Sonny lunges at the desk, and Brian and his chair tumble down yet again, newspaper fluttering down onto his chest. “Did she!?”

Brian violently shakes his head, accidentally sending Josephine flying. He scrambles to collect her off of the floor and smooth her feathers down. 

Sonny ‘hmphs’ and tugs his hat back on, stepping just out of the way of an incoming piss splash. “Whatever. Let me know if she does. Or, actually, don’t.”

Brian nods and swallows, his side burning. Josephine huddles down in his hands, anxiously chirping. 

Sonny digs around in his coat pocket and comes up with a wad of random bills, slamming them down on the counter. “Get a new chair.”

And, with that, he leaves. And, with that, Brian begins counting. He gets halfway through the stack of bills before the door rings, he instinctively lunges for the bathroom just in case Josephine shits again (which she does), and he trips over Susan and falls back to the floor, because that’s apparently just where he lives now. 

“Bad time?” asks Pat. Josephine screeches; Brian sits up and plops her onto the cat’s back before standing and grabbing some tissues for his hair. 

“No!” Brian grins, and the grin might be just a bit too wide. But whatever, Pat’s smiling back, even if it looks a bit...off. “It’s fine! You here for the cats?”

As if on cue, Susan struts out from behind the counter, Josephine proudly sitting upon her back like a Mongol general. Pat doesn’t give either of them a passing glance, instead continually glancing back at the door, head jerking quicker and quicker with every check. Brian frowns a bit.

“You okay?” Pat asks.

“Yeah,” Brian says, bending down so he can fix his hair in the computer screen’s reflection. He wrinkles his nose and reaches for his water bottle, emptying it out over his head and going back at it with the tissues. “Peachy. Susan’s out today, if you’re into personality.”

Susan, as if proving Brian’s point, lets out a vicious roar and shakes until Josephine flies off her back and across the room, landing on a soggy pile of newspapers that Brian should really get to cleaning up. Someday. Pat raises an eyebrow and crouches down to pick the cat up, and Susan, for the first time in her entire long,  _ long  _ life, allows it, snuggling back into Pat’s arms and blinking cutely up at him with a meow that screams  _ “Please save me from this shithole” _ . 

Brian wrings his hair out into the trash can underneath the desk, far too used to this. He should probably invest in a shower. Maybe put it in the bathroom where the large collection of dead plants currently sits. Sonny would probably be okay with that. 

“I’m not here for the cats,” Pat says. Brian’s about to point out that the dogs aren’t very people-friendly and the tarantulas are, frankly, hellspawn, when Pat continues: “I’m, uh. Here for you.”

Brian smacks the top of his head against the bottom of the desk, almost hitting an exposed screw and narrowly avoiding the gun Sonny duct-taped to the underside of the front desk “for emergencies”. 

Brian makes the vocal equivalent of  _ ‘Hhhh’  _ and stands, rubbing the back of his head, probably looking like an entire idiot. Two idiots combined, even. And Pat’s calmly petting Susan like he didn’t just almost cause homicide via gay panic.

“Couple friends and I are going bar hopping tonight after they get out of work,” Pat continues, not sounding the least bit concerned about Brian’s concurrent gay panic. “Thinking Brooklyn, maybe. Probably going to end up at my place for Mario Kart. You down?”

“Shit, yeah,” Brian says, instead of something cool like,  _ “Why, Patrick, I would love to go out on an evening on the town with you and your friends. I sincerely hope it will only bring us closer,”  _ or,  _ “Fuck yeah, Pat,”  _ or,  _ “I’m not just saying yes because the customer is always right, I’m genuinely interested you both as a person and as a potential boyfriend-slash-husband” _ .

Pat’s smile shifts into something a bit more genuine, wider, as he gently runs his fingers down Susan’s side. He’s getting white hair all over his black jacket. Brian should maybe stop staring. 

“Cool,” Pat says. “Let’s go.”

Brian blinks. “Now?”

“Yeah,” Pat says, like it’s obvious and Brian’s missing something. 

Brian makes a show of looking at the nearly-broken wall clock on the wall above the actually-broken vending machine, then at the pile of feathers and disappointment on the newspaper, then at his watch, then at Pat again. Pat, meanwhile, has his head bent and is tickling under Susan’s chin. Not paying attention. 

“I’m working,” Brian says, loudly. Pat jumps. Susan grunts. Josephine wails. “And,” he adds, just as loudly because he’s still panicking just a bit and he’s never had much control over the volume of his voice in the face of a pretty man, woman, or beyond or in-between. “I have literal shit in my hair.”

“Ah.”

“And I don’t get off until five.”

“Right.”

It shouldn’t look so beautiful, distaste. Pat looks like he just ate a whole lemon, mouth turned down and hand stilling against Susan’s side. Not good, probably, he’s going to think Brian hates him and then never come back and then Brian will die alone and covered in bird shit. 

So Brian quickly says, “Not that I don’t want to go! Because I do. I just.” He weakly motions towards Josephine with a wave of the hand and a slight tilt of the head. “Work.”

“Yeah, I get it.” He’s shaking his head, smiling ever so slightly, just a gentle slope added to his already-beautifully-curved mouth. Brian should stop staring at his mouth, like, right now. “I’ll, uh, get you? At five? Here?” 

“Yeah! I’ll, uh. Try and de-shit my hair.”

“Great!” Pat fully grins, and it’s nearly blinding. Absolutely beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, sharp, cute. Somehow still soft. Brian’s still staring. Pat isn’t telling him to stop. “Five!”

Brian nods exuberantly. “Five!”

“Five,” Pat says. 

Susan grunts her way out of Pat’s arms and back onto the floor, landing with a grumble and a hiss in Brian’s general direction. She pads behind the counter and flops onto Brian’s messenger bag like it’s her personal pillow; it practically is at this point.

“Five,” Brian repeats. A smile of his own has crossed his face and is probably doofy and silly-looking. Definitely not attractive. 

Pat ducks his head and brushes a lock of hair behind his ear. “Yeah. Five. Uh, be safe. ‘Kay?”

Brian blinks a few times, his smile flickering. “Yeah, ‘course. It’s not- yeah, this place sucks, but it’s not, like, dangerous.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah.” Pat laughs, almost bordering on a nervous-sounding giggle. Almost. Susan narrows her eyes, and Brian almost mirrors the motion. “Five. See you, Brian.”

Brian rolls his eyes, leaning back against the back of his chair and catching himself on the wall behind him when he realizes and remembers that the chair is currently in pieces on the floor. When he looks up, Pat’s gone, Josephine’s on the counter again, and Brian’s messenger bag is on the counter next to her and cleared of all cat hair, looking almost brand new. When he raises a hand to brush some hair out of his eyes, it feels like it was never shat upon.

The door to the shop opens, the bell rings, and Brian looks up with the smile still on his face.

* * *

_ “You’re fucked,”  _ Zuko seems to be telling him that night as he finishes putting away groceries. Brian rolls his eyes and tries to squeeze a bag of marshmallows in between the five boxes of Nature’s Valley granola bars that he doesn’t remember buying. 

“I am fine,” he tells his cat. All five boxes fall out of the cupboard and on top of the eggs. He sighs and goes to find a rag before Zuko and start licking the shells up again. 

The cat cries out as Brian blocks him from the yolky goodness. Brian gives him a look. 

Zuko nibbles on Brian’s sleeve.  _ “You’re overreacting. It’s just egg. I can take care of it.” _

“Absolutely not,” Brian says. “You’re a menace.”

_ “Give me the goddamn eggs, father.” _

Now, Brian knows better. But Zuko will probably eat the eggy rag as soon as Brian turns his back. So he sighs and swipes the carton into the trash and goes to sulk in his room because it’s either that or having his cat shame him more than usual.

He flops onto his bed with a groan, immediately pulls his pillow over his throbbing head and closes his eyes. He can hear Laura coming through the front door in her usual loud fashion, announcing she’s heading right back out because Brian forgot cat food. The door slams shut. Jonah, in the room next to Brian’s, is playing something on his guitar, soft and gentle, barely able to be heard over the air conditioner and Brian’s heart pounding in his chest. It’s too loud, probably not healthy. If it’s still acting up in the morning, he might try and take his first sick day and get to the walk-in down by the deli. The church tower a couple blocks away starts its long drawl towards the sixth bell and back again.

* * *

Josephine burrows her way into the hood of Brian’s sweatshirt as soon as he pulls her out of her cage with a contented chirp. Brian sighs and reaches back to stroke the top of her head with one finger, and then it’s off to work doing things he shouldn’t be doing. Like trying to remember what the actual  _ fuck  _ he was thinking by shoving the broken remains of his chair under the desk instead of dumping them in the alley outside like the rest of the building does with its trash. So he rolls up his sleeves, manages to dodge all the piss droplets on his first trip upstairs, and only manages to knock over two trash cans on the way back down. And then he knocks the other three trash cans over on the second trip and drops the chair’s back and two of its legs on top of what might be a dead woman lying in the stairwell dressed like she’s straight out of a knockoff Agatha Christie novel. All normal. 

And then, as soon as his back is turned, Josephine lets out an earsplitting screech and Brian has just enough time to stumble into the building before the potentially-dead woman is standing and swinging a chair leg at him with a war cry that could only rival Gerard Butler’s as he kicked a man into a pit. Brian slams the door in her face and maybe screams a little as the door  _ dents  _ when she slams into it. 

The minute Brian manages to yank the gun free from under the desk and pull out his phone to call Sonny and then 9-1-1, in that order because Sonny has a very strict “No Cops” policy which Brian would normally be in favor of, the banging stops. It’s dead silent.

Brian stands there for a moment, half-crouched behind the desk with his thumb shakily lingering over the  _ ‘Call’  _ button, barely breathing. The gun on the desk in front of him shines too brightly to be something in this shop. Josephine hesitantly flits her way to the top of Brian’s head, shuddering; he absently reaches a finger up and smooths it down her back. 

And then the dogs in the back howl and Brian’s on the floor under the desk with a head covered in shit and a terrified parakeet screeching at the top of her lungs next to his ear pressing down and listening to Sonny’s ever-present voicemail:  _ “How the fuck did you get this number? Don’t call again or I’ll- sorry, this is Sonny Kintobor, please leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” _

And then, as soon as it tones, Brian says, “Hey, Sonny, it’s Brian, sir, there’s a crazy dead woman trying to break into the- fuck, I know how this sounds but listen, she’s- she dented the door and that was not my fault. Just, hah, thought you should know. In case I die and you see the door and decide to bill my sister, which you should not do because it was the dead woman.”

One of the cockroaches scuttles its way under the door from the back rooms and up onto the desk with an irritated hiss. Josephine whistles and flutters up to join it. Brian winces and finishes his message with a simple: “Anyway, I think she’s gone. But I’m taking the rest of the day off. Please don’t fire me. Goodbye.”

And he hangs up, stares down at his phone and his reflection staring back up at him. He needs a haircut. And sleep. Maybe both, but this is New York City. 

After going into the back and feeding the animals - only flinching a little this time at the dogs and their seemingly-endless rows of  _ sharp  _ teeth - and making sure Josephine is happy in her little cage, and mostly washing the bird shit out of his hair, he carefully puts the gun back in its spot, zips up his hoodie, grabs his bag, and locks up for the day at nine in the morning. 

  
  
  


Halfway to the subway station, someone falls into step beside him. Tall, dressed like a murder dinner theater reject. 

“You threw a chair at me,” she says. 

“You were supposed to be dead,” Brian says, trying to will the shake out of his voice. He flashes the dead woman a faint smile and flinches at her stony-faced stare. “Look, I’m sorry? About the chair? But you literally looked like any of the other bodies we get out there, I don’t know what you want from me.”

“There’re more?” 

Her eyes seem to twinkle. Her mouth curls into a grin, sharp teeth and blood-red lipstick. Sharp teeth. Sharp  _ teeth _ . He blinks, and her smile looks as normal as a dead woman’s can. Not dead woman, actually, maybe-homeless and definitely terrifying beyond all belief. 

Brian shrinks down into his hoodie and nods. “Yeah. Dunno where they come from, honestly, Sonny won’t tell me shit.”

“Sonny your boss?”

“Yeah. He’s, uh. Nice? Usually. Gave me money for a new chair yesterday. I should, ah, probably get one before tomorrow.”

“What happened to your old one?”

He narrows his eyes at her. “Am I being interrogated?”

She winks, and Brian should maybe, like, not be talking to her. Should, in fact, be running away from her at top speed. He’s got long legs, she’s in heels, there’s no way she’d be able to catch him. And it’s New York, there’s so many people around that he’d be able to slip on his hood and be hidden immediately, especially down in the station they just passed that he should be in. But...he can get the next station. Not like he hasn’t done it before, and it’s not like she’s dangerous. Just terrifying in every way, shape, and form, and he’s a grown-ass man who can handle dead women just fine, he’s dealt with them every Friday morning when he goes to open up the shop and finds them bleeding out on the stoop by the trash heaps. 

So Brian sighs and hangs his head, shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. 

“Look,” he says, slowly. “I don’t know what happened to the old one. I went back to feed the cats yesterday after Sonny left, and, when I came back, the chair was in pieces on the floor. I’m just glad he’s paying.”

“Well duh he’d pay. His shop,” she snorts, brushing some hair behind her ear. “How much he paying you, anyway?”

Brian fully stops walking and frowns. “I...twelve bucks an hour? Thirteen? Somewhere around there.”

Something...doesn’t feel right about that. It’s right, he knows it’s twelve because he sees the money in his account every other Wednesday morning (when he actually checks, that is, he’s still not used to receiving a paycheck in the first place). Nothing about this feels right, actually. Why is she still following him? He’s pretty sure this isn’t how friendships form. Or any kind of social relationship. Or anything, period. 

The dead woman stops, too, and tilts her head. “You okay…?”

“Brian,” he supplies. He bites his lip and shakes his head, puts a smile back on his face and starts walking again. The other subway station’s only a couple blocks away, he can definitely make it before his train gets there, lose her. 

“Simone,” she says. She hurriedly catches up with him, her own smile flickering briefly. “Seriously, you good? I didn’t scare you that bad, did I?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Rip. Hey, uh, Brian, you sure the animals back there’ll be fine while you’re getting that chair? Because I-”

“I’m not getting the chair,” Brian interrupts. “I’m going home because Josephine shit on me and IKEA isn’t exactly a pro-shit environment. Then I’m going to have a panic attack over you almost breaking the door down. Then I’m going to curl up with my cat and watch  _ Naruto  _ until my roommates get home and I can tell them how I was almost killed by a homeless crazy woman who looks like Poirot’s spurned lover.”

The dead woman- Simone, she’s Simone - blinks a few times. 

“Damn,” she says. “what if you get any customers?”

He rolls his eyes. “We haven’t had anyone in that isn’t a robber since I started working there. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

He ducks down into the stairs leading to the subway station. She doesn’t follow. 

* * *

The envelope is a dull, mossy green with little clovers bordering the stamp, looking hand-drawn. There’s no return address. Instead, in its place is a very detailed, very anatomically-correct drawing of a penis. That Brian is not paying any attention to at all, definitely hasn’t been trying to figure out what it  _ means  _ for the past ten minutes instead of working. 

Right in the middle in what looks like Comic Sans is a simple:  _ To Sonny _ .

It’s the first piece of mail the shop’s gotten since Brian started, and he isn’t quite sure what to do with it. Because there’s no way in hell Sonny’s showing back up again before the end of the world, and Brian’s pretty sure it’s, like, a crime to open someone else’s mail. Even if said mail is  _ extremely  _ enticing to the neighborhood snooper. Even if said mail is probably just a joke. Even if said mail isn’t a joke and is somehow, actually, related to one of the several drug dens in the building, or the single back-alley kidney parlor on floor three (Brian was invited up to visit this morning on his way down to the shop. He politely declined and was given a business card, which now sits in his wallet just waiting for the cops. Who he’ll call. Eventually. Once he finds a better job that probably would be very upset if he was killed by the mob. If this is the mob. It’s probably fine, actually.)

So Brian gives it to Pamela, who takes it in her tiny little claws and immediately shreds it to bits. She sneezes at the cloud of emerald-green glitter that poofs out of the envelope in a mushroom cloud, tries to eat it, sneezes again, and goes to curl back up in Brian’s lap, covered in the stuff. 

It’s been a whole entire day since Simone the Undead, Simone the Terrifying, Simone the Slightly-Evil nearly broke the door in, but it feels like it’s been a week. It took the entire afternoon to track down a goddamn office chair, then another hour and half to try and get it back to his apartment. Halfway there, it started raining. By the time he was lying face-down on his bed with Zuko casually lounging across his butt like it was his, which it most definitely is not, Brian’s head was throbbing almost as badly as it was the night before and his shingles was beginning to rise its disgusting little head again.

The door was undented when Brian came in to work. The remnants of the old chair were nowhere to be seen. The alleyway smelled of potpourri, somehow, and not the usual blood-piss fragrance Brian’s become all too accustomed too over the past two months. 

It’s been a very quiet day. He’s been sleeping through it, mostly, minding his old doctor’s orders to rest up so the shingles don’t revolt too much, only really getting up when he thinks he hears another robber coming down the stairs and to feed the animals at noon. So, when the wall clock above the desk strikes three and the door chimes, it totally isn’t Brian’s fault that he screams a little and narrowly avoids breaking the new chair with a fall. Not at all. Pamela glares up at him and migrates to the stack of magazines in the corner and settles back down into her own nap.

He’s about to apologize for screaming, about to say that the register is actually empty this time, when he opens his eyes and sees the most beautiful man in the world: tall, dark, handsome, and just this side of familiar. Brian’s sure he’s seen him in a dream somewhere, a dream he’s long forgotten about. His hair and flannel are both clinging tightly to him, both soaked from the unceasing rain outside. He doesn’t even flinch at the sudden slosh of piss from the ceiling inches behind him. 

“Hi,” Brian breathes, leaning forward against the desk. Josephine flutters down next to his elbow and chirps out a croak. 

The man awkwardly smiles, eyes flicking around the shop. His jacket’s covered in cat hair, Brian thinks. Either that or he sheds. 

“Hi,” he says. “Uh, sorry if I made you uncomfortable. The other day. Like I know there’s this thing about customers asking workers on dates on the clock and I should’ve thought of that, but-”

Brian shakes his head and puts his hands up in the universal _ slow the fuck down, handsome _ motion. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

The man blinks once, twice. “What?”

“Cause you’re the first person that’s come in here and hasn’t robbed me. And I’m extremely okay with that! But you…what?”

The man mutters something under his breath and runs a hand through his hair, catching on the bottom. His eyes, just for a moment, turn yellow, and Brian scoots his chair back before he even realizes he’s doing it. 

“Brian,” the man says, slowly. His voice is…rough. Brian somehow gets the feeling it isn’t supposed to be like that, almost like the universe is telling him  _ nononononofuuuuuckno _ . “how long have you been working here?”

“Four months, why?”

The man swears, Brian makes to stand up and rush out of the room and maybe borrow one of the guys upstairs like they keep offering every time someone weird comes by, and that’s when the cat explodes.

Brian tumbles to the floor with a well-deserved screech and stares at the smoking remains of Pamela just a few feet away from where he was. Smoking, green smoke? Same color as the glitter. Oh, fuck. Sonny’s going to  _ kill  _ him, or maybe thank him for letting the animal take the- no, what is he  _ thinking _ ? 

The magazines underneath are perfectly fine, as is the wall she was laying against. 

“Shit,” the man curses. Brian pokes his head up above the desk and watches him pace over to Pamela’s corpse (fuck she’s  _ dead _ and he let it happen and it was his fault oh god Sonny’s going to fire him and kill him and then he’ll never be able to finish his damn musical and- ). He pokes the corpse with the tip of his boot and wrinkles his entire face up. “Sorry about this.”

Brian feels the blood drain from his face. “You-”

“I can...find another cat? New cat? Just don’t let this one eat envelopes, please, Simone’s gonna fuckin’- she’s never going to let this go,  _ fuck _ -”

“Was that a bomb? Did you try bombing us? What the fuck?”

“What!? Of course I didn’t! Not you, anyway.”

“Oh my God.” Brian pulls himself to his feet and shakily pulls out his phone. It won’t turn on, what the  _ fuck _ why won’t it turn on? He snaps his head up at the man with a narrow-eyed glare. 

The man lets out a breath and goes back to playing with his hair. “Brian, please. Just...sit down, I can explai-”

“‘Sit down’? Excuse me!? You killed Pamela and tried to kill my boss! And me, probably!”

“I’d never- Brian, sit down.”

Brian sits down. Leans forward with his hands on his desk like a schoolboy, phone in his lap. Josephine raises an eyebrow as much as a bird with no eyebrows can. The man seems to sag in place and leans against the wall next to the corpse. 

“Look,” the man sighs. “you’re upset. I don’t blame you. She was probably a very good cat. But Simone told me your boss fucked with you, so I maybe set up a bomb for him. Maybe. Possibly. Please don’t hate me.”

“I am going to get fired,” Brian says, voice as calm as he can manage considering he  _ can’t fucking stand up  _ when he tries. Can’t reach for his phone, either. “And I am going to have a panic attack. And it will be all your fault, and then I will hate you forever, you terrible person.”

He blinks, and suddenly the man is sitting on the desk in front of him, criss-cross. His eyes are that yellow from before, then they’re back to brown, then yellow, then Brian closes his own eyes because he’s going to throw up. 

“Brian,” says the man, voice low and gentle and it’s absolutely  _ evil  _ how much it soothes Brian’s stupid panic brain. “hey. It’s fine. Okay? We’re going to go get another cat, and your boss won’t know the difference.”

“You killed her,” Brian whimpers. He’s shaking in his seat, and it’s pathetic despite being absolutely valid. “ _ I  _ killed her. Sonny’s gonna kill me.”

“I’ll kill him first. And, hey. Wasn’t your fault, okay? You didn’t know the envelope was magic.”

Brian cracks an incredulous eye open. “Was what, now?”

The man winces. “Shit.”

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is, as always, [asorrywrite](https://asorrywrite.tumblr.com/). I talk about literally everything on there. Name it, it's there. Comments and kudos and shit are absolutely appreciated, but this is really just me fucking around in a universe similar to the one in Dimension 20 (which yall should definitely check out of you're a fan of modern magic and also brennan). And, honestly, thanks for reading.


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